Selected Poems
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Drawing from every stage of the Nobel laureate's career, Derek Walcott's Selected Poems brings together famous pieces from his early volumes, including "A Far Cry from Africa" and "A City's Death by Fire," with passages from the celebrated Omeros and selections from his latest major works, which extend his contributions to reenergizing the contemporary long poem. Here we find all of Walcott's essential themes, from grappling with the Caribbean's colonial legacy to his conflicted love of home and of Western literary tradition; from the wisdom-making pain of time and mortality to the strange wonder of love, the natural world, and what it means to be human. We see his lifelong labor at poetic crafts, his broadening of the possibilities of rhyme and meter, stanza forms, language, and metaphor. Edited and with an introduction by the Jamaican poet and critic Edward Baugh, this volume is a perfect representation of Walcott's breadth of work, spanning almost half a century.The New York Times - William LoganWalcott has captured his islands with a lushness and richness rare in our poetry - the outposts of empire once seemed as strange as Kipling's India or Bishop's Brazil. If air travel has brought them closer, it has brought their tragedies closer as well. No living poet has written verse more delicately rendered or distinguished than Walcott, though few individual poems seem destined to be remembered. For more than half a century he has served as our poet of exile - a man almost without a country, unless the country lies wherever he has landed, in flight from himself.
Introduction by Edward BaughFrom In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960 (1962)Prelude As John to Patmos A City's Death by Fire A Far Cry from African Ruins of a Great House Tales of the Islands Return to D'Ennery; Rain A Letter from Brooklyn IslandsFrom The Castaway and Other Poems (1965)The Castaway Tarpon The Flock Laventille The Almond Trees Verandah Crusoe's Island CodicilFrom The Gulf and Other Poems (1969)Mass Man Homage to Edward Thomas The Gulf Blues Air Landfall, Grenada Homecoming: Anse La Raye Nearing FortyFrom Another Life (1973)Chapter 1I ("Verandahs, where the pages of the sea")II ("In its dimensions the drawing could not trace")Chapter 2II ("Maman, / only on Sundays was the Singer silent")III ("Old house, old woman, old room")Chapter 7II ("About the August of my fourteenth year")III ("Our father, / who floated in the vaults of Michangelo")IV ("Noon, / and its sacred water sprinkles")V ("Who could tell, in 'the crossing of that pair'")Chapter 9I ("There are already, invisible on canvas")II ("Where did I fail? I could draw")Chapter 14 ("When the oil green water glows but doesn't catch")Chapter 20 ("Smug, behind glass, we watch the passengers")Chapter 22 ("Miasma, acedia, the enervations of damp")From Sea Grapes (1976)Sea Grapes Adam's Song The Cloud Parades, Parades The Bright Field Sainte Lucie Volcano Sea Canes Midsummer, Tobago Oddjob, a Bull Terrier To Return to the TressFrom The Star-Apple Kingdom (1979)The Schooner Flight1. Adios, Carenge3. Shabine Leaves the Republic4. The Flight, Passing Blanchisseuse5. Shabine Encounters the Middle Passage6. The Sailor Sings Back to the Casuarinas7. The Flight Anchors in Castries Harbour8. Fight with the Crew10. Out of the Depths11. After the StormThe Sea Is History The Saddhu of Couva Forest of EuropeFrom The Fortunate Traveller (1981)Piano Practice Europa The Spoiler's Return Early Pompeian The Fortunate Traveller The Season of Phantasmal PeaceFrom Midsummer (1984)I ("The jet bores like a silverfish through volumes of cloud")II ("Companion in Rome, whom Rome makes as old as Rome")VI ("Midsummer stretches beside me with its cat's yawn")XLIX ("A wind-scraped headland, a sludgy dishwater sea")LI ("Since all of your work was really an effort to appease")LIII ("There was one Syrian, with his bicycle, in our town")LIV ("The midsummer sea, the hot pitch road, this grass, these shacks that made me")From The Arkansas Testament (1987)Saint Lucia's First Communion The Light of the World Night Fishing Elsewhere Winter Lamps For Adrian The Arkansas TestamentFrom Omeros (1990)Chapter I ("'This is how, one sunrise, we cut down them canoes'")Chapter III I ("'Touchez-i, encore: N'ai fendre choux-ous-ou, salope!'")Chapter IV ("I sat on the white terrace waiting for the cheque")Chapter V III ("How fast it fades! Maud thought; the enameled sky")Chapter XXIV ("From his heart's depth he knew she was never coming") Chapter XXV ("Mangrove, their ankles in water, walked with the canoe")Chapter LXIV ("I sang of quiet Achille, Afolabe's son") From The Bounty (1997)4 Thanksgiving14 ("Never get used to this; the feathery, swaying casuarinas")24 ("Alphaeus Prince, What a name! He was one of the Princes")26 ("The sublime always begins with the chord 'And then I saw'")27 ("Praise to the rain, eraser of picnics, praise the grey cloud")31 Italian Eclogues I ("On the bright road to Rome, beyond Mantua")34 ("At the end of this line there is an opening door")From Tiepolo's Hound (2000)I ("They stroll on Sundays down Dronningens Street")VII1. ("Falling from chimneys, an exhausted arrow—")2. ("O, the exclamation of white roses, of a wet")3. ("Since light was simply particles in air")XXII ("One dawn I woke up to the gradual terror")XXIV3. ("I looked beyond the tarmac. A bright field")4. ("Fall; and a cool blonde crosses Christopher—")XXVI ("The swallows flit in immortality")From The Prodigal (2004)2I ("Chasms and fissures of the vertiginous Alps")4IV ("I wanted to be able to write: 'There is nothing like it'")6III ("'So, how was Italy?' My neighbor grinned")IV ("Blue-grey morning, sunlight shaping Jersey")9I ("I lay on the bed near the balcony in Guadalajara")II ("I carry a small white city in my head")IV ("When we were boys coming home from the beach")13I ("Flare of the flame tree and white egrets stalking")II ("And the first voice replied in the foam")III ("So has it come to this, to have to choose?")15 I ("Ritorno a Milano, if that's correct")16II ("A grey dawn, dun. Rain-gauze shrouding the headlines")17II ("Compare Milan, compare a glimpse of the Arno")18III ("We were headed steadily into the open sea")IIV ("I had gaped in anticipation of an emblem")
